Preview: Ninja Gaiden 3 changes things up on Wii U

It won't be the same game that disappointed you last year. Yosuke Hayashi can promise you that much.

A year ago, the head of Team Ninja watched his development team's prized project, Ninja Gaiden 3, struggle.

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This year, Hayashi and Team Ninja have hit the reset button. They are trying again with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console. And Hayashi promises that they've made big changes.

"It's a Ninja Gaiden game," he told the Daily News at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles earlier this month. "We're not trying to be anything else."

And that was the problem with the original NG3. The series has long been known for its brutally challenging combat, a brand of battling where one false step leads to death. But in Ninja Gaiden, Team Ninja took a different approach.

After observing the successes of faster-paced, less intricate combat systems (think Bayonetta), Team Ninja rebuilt its battling. Ninja Gaiden 3 sent wave after wave of stupid enemies at star Ryu Hayabusa, and all you had to do was mash buttons.

It was a move made in fear, Hayashi admitted.

"We looked at the game industry and how things were shaping up, and we felt we couldn't get left behind," he said. "And we had to advance ourselves. And that was the idea behind some of the changes in NG3."

Except it didn't work. Critics ripped the game, and gamers fell asleep at the controls. And the end result was the first game in the history of the series that was considered a colossal disappointment.

Hayashi insists that that won't be an issue on the Wii U. Team Ninja isn't just porting its title over to Nintendo's new console: It's going to make you remember Ninja Gaiden on the original Xbox.

The difficulty seems to be back in the series, and the development team won't overuse the touchscreen; a few quick minutes of gameplay revealed that combat is still all about joystick moves and button-presses.

There are still gallons of blood and gore – maybe too much of that. But enemies did seem wiser, forcing a more tactical approach from Ryu. It seems like a minor alteration – and Ninja Gaiden 3 had other problems, such as blasé visuals, too – but it's still a step in the right direction.

"For Razor's Edge, we listened to the feedback (from Ninja Gaiden 3)," Hayashi said. "And we reexamined what the series was, what the game was, what people want. We're going back to rethinking what the series means."

"The concept for the Wii U version of Razor's Edge is for it to be its own action game, an action game that doesn't try to be anything else. It just tries to be its best."